Archive Page 2

I had to make a tough decision today. When J-Rab and I left South Africa, she took The Cub with her to Boston for two and a half weeks while I focussed on finding a job and a place for us to live in London.

Time slipped away and before I knew it, the two and a half weeks were almost up and I’d found nothing, so we paid to have J-Rab’s return ticket postponed for another two weeks, making her return date this Friday.

Problem is, despite countless meetings, interviews, positive conversations and optimistic recruiters, after a full month of being here I still have nothing.

How insane is that. For the first time since my professional career began back in 2006, come 5pm this afternoon, I will officially be unemployed with absolutely nothing lined up for the future.

The thought that on Monday, when all you guys are getting up, getting dressed and hitting your cubicles, I’ll just be lying in bed staring at the ceiling fills me in equal parts with terror and fathomless joy.

So what gives? Why the sudden decision to pull out of the race and just park off by the side-lines for awhile? Did I win the lottery? Inherit a fortune of a distant great-aunt? Finally lose my goddamned mind?

I can’t escape this feeling that somewhere out there there is a band or a person writing and playing music right now that is so fucking good that if I could just find it, if I could just hear one song, it would stay with me for life.

It’s a problem with me. I look out over the cityscape sometimes or I look at pictures of sleepy suburbs or big skyscrapers or even log cabins in the woods, totally isolated and termite-ridden.

I look at those pictures and I wonder if someone somewhere inside one of those buildings or houses or on one of those streets is playing a song that could change my life.

I’m living out one of my childhood dreams at the moment and it’s rad. You guys remember Super Mario 3? With the raccoon suit? I LOVED that game when I was a kid but only ever played it on friend’s consoles.

I got pretty far in the game but never finished it because the Golden China console my buddies had at the time was so glitchy if you even nudged it slightly the game literally disintegrated.

I bought a Wii U almost a year ago, during which time I’ve played exactly three games on it – The Cave (average), Super Mario 3D World (brilliant) and yep, you guessed it, Super Mario 3.

On the internet, you have two options when it comes to how you handle things. You can suspend disbelief and take things as they are or you can view everything through a lens of infinite doubt.

I suspend disbelief because I enjoy wonder, I like to experience it and not pull it apart through tedious over-analysis. I used to believe in magic as a kid, I guess you could say nothing’s changed.

The work of Finnish photographer Janne Parviainen is an example of a kind of magic. Janne uses long exposure times with a multitude of LED lights to “paint” the beautiful and haunting images you’re about to see.

What today needs is some crazy internet animals that think they are people. In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s the reason the internet was invented way back in 2007 – to show everyone how flippin RAD animals are.

Animals have existed for well over 90 years in various forms namely flying, crawling, swimming and running. Their primary function is to provide LOLZ for mankind over the internet and taste delicious.

Animals were first discovered in their natural habitat, pet stores, where they begin their lives as tiny replicas of their fully-grown selves and spend a lot of time chewing (except fish, but they can’t be really classified as animals as they belong to the reptile family).

I’d heard that Nirvana were recently inducted into the Rock ‘n Roll Hall Of Fame, which is a great way to preserve their legacy, but at the same time I couldn’t help but think that Kurt was probably rolling in his grave.

Then I actually watched the half-hour induction ceremony last night and was glad I did because a lot of cool things were said about the band and I learned a few things I didn’t know before.

The band performed four songs at the end with surviving members Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic and Pat Smear and an array of female vocalists filling in for Kurt, which I think he would have liked.

Last week (or was it the week before…?) I posted that video about SOLAR FRIKKIN’ ROADWAYS, a pretty genius idea that an engineering couple came up with to replace roads with solar panels.

I wrote about their mission to provide the world with huge amounts of clean energy whilst addressing a whole other stack of environmental issues and ended the post saying I was going to donate $10 to their cause.

At that stage they had raised a total of about $260k of their $1m target and had 11 days left. A week later they were over the $1.5m mark and have extended the donation period by another 20 days – all because of me!

Hipsters will hate this post because seriously dude? Alt-J music videos? Dude, these were posted like, two years ago, everyone’s seen these already.

But if you haven’t seen these videos already, and you have a twisted, dark side like your Tiger pal, then these might strike a chord in you. Either that or they will put you off these tracks FOREVER.

“Breezeblocks” I found especially twisted. I always thought of the track as all upbeat and quirky, a love song about how hard it is to let go. Having watched the video and read the lyrics though, I realised I’d got the entire song completely wrong.